BLOOD, CLASS AND EMPIRE

Sub-titled 'The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship', since the end of the Cold War, so-called experts have been predicting the eclipse of America's 'special relationship' with Britain. But as events have shown, especially in the wake of 9/11, the political and cultural ties between America and Britain have grown stronger. Hitchens examines the dynamics of this relationship, its many cultural manifestations, from James Bond to Winston Churchill, Brit Kitsch, Vox Americana to nuclear jealousy and Rudyard Kipling, and explains why it still persists. Contrarian, essayist and polemicist, Hitchens notes that the special ingredient is empire, transmitted from an ancient regime which has tried to preserve and renew itself. England has attempted to play Greece to an American Rome, but ironically having encountered the United States to become an equal partner in the business of empire, Britain found itself supplanted. A mordent, episodic, brilliantly lucid history of transatlantic negotiations of power and cultural influence, Hitchens combines irresistible journalistic raciness with a distinction of scholarship. 398pp, paperback.